The state of Hrothgar and Viera

Of course, this post is going to be VERY biased.

I love Hrothgar to death. I love it much more than I did my Miq'ote when I first started the game back in 2014. Now that I have this amazing looking race and have played him for quite some time I want to shed some light on the two major issues these races have.

First, the hair: It has been over a year since this expansion has been released and still have no quality of life updates regarding these two races. Hrothgar's hair is still stuck to the face we choose and is absolutely ridiculous why we are stuck with these hair types. You tell us not to mod our game because of Third party rules but y'all make it so hard to continue playing this race when we have had nothing to customize our Hrothgar's and is running into the issue where every single one of them looks exactly the same. At least allow us the opportunity to use the other hairstyles from different faces on other face types. What I really want though is to have our hair returned to us. i have spent time and gil to get these exclusive hairstyles and now they are useless because I can't wear them and so in order to use them I have to spend another $10 to change to a ARR/HW race to wear them.

Viera at least has some hairstyle they can wear that doesn't require them to fantasia and choose a different face, but the fact that the hairstyles previously bought with actual money are restricted too is ridiculous. At least give us a warning on hairstyles that "This hairstyle is unavailable for Hrothgar and Viera" before we waste our money. I see several posts of people who have bought the Shadowbringers Y'shtola hairstyle with the expectation they could put it on their Viera.

Next is the helmets/hats: The restrictions of hats and helmets is ridiculous. What I find weird is that you can't wear many of the helmets with the worry of like clipping or something yet you can squish Hrothgar's heads in the Diabolic Helm of Fending...
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...m/91028afbda2/

...but Hrothgar and Viera can't wear simple things like hats. Y'all can weirdly contort the shape of helmets to fit Miq'otes ears but can't make an opening to let Viera's ears roam freely or just let Hrothgar wear the helmets/hats.

I'm sure there are other things I have left out but I have made my major points already.

2 years since SHB release? Think you got some dates mixed up. It got released July 2nd last year.

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Originally Posted by Lonkkis

2 years since SHB release? Think you got some dates mixed up. It got released July 2nd last year.

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Thinking too far into the future lol

There definitely should be a way to consistently and easily tell if something will work as expected on those two races (for anything, mogshop, hair purchases, etc). Also I think that if SE is unable to detach hair from the face that people would be a lot more friendly to the limitation if they allowed Viera and Hrothgar the ability to just change their face from the barber (can't change gender, race, or anything else besides the face / hair since they're bound together).

Although controversially perhaps I've not minded not having my hat shown in most cases, I'll not fight against people getting me more options though- just interestingly I've hardly noticed and just embraced the not wearing a hat life lol.

Overall happy they exist even with limitations, but of course if we can fix those then that'd be preferable because...... because.. lol, why would anyone want to have it purposefully be restricted in such strange ways.

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Originally Posted by Decoy_Wolff

Of course, this post is going to be VERY biased.

I love Hrothgar to death. I love it much more than I did my Miq'ote when I first started the game back in 2014. Now that I have this amazing looking race and have played him for quite some time I want to shed some light on the two major issues these races have.

First, the hair: It has been over a year since this expansion has been released and still have no quality of life updates regarding these two races. Hrothgar's hair is still stuck to the face we choose and is absolutely ridiculous why we are stuck with these hair types. You tell us not to mod our game because of Third party rules but y'all make it so hard to continue playing this race when we have had nothing to customize our Hrothgar's and is running into the issue where every single one of them looks exactly the same. At least allow us the opportunity to use the other hairstyles from different faces on other face types. What I really want though is to have our hair returned to us. i have spent time and gil to get these exclusive hairstyles and now they are useless because I can't wear them and so in order to use them I have to spend another $10 to change to a ARR/HW race to wear them.

Viera at least has some hairstyle they can wear that doesn't require them to fantasia and choose a different face, but the fact that the hairstyles previously bought with actual money are restricted too is ridiculous. At least give us a warning on hairstyles that "This hairstyle is unavailable for Hrothgar and Viera" before we waste our money. I see several posts of people who have bought the Shadowbringers Y'shtola hairstyle with the expectation they could put it on their Viera.

Next is the helmets/hats: The restrictions of hats and helmets is ridiculous. What I find weird is that you can't wear many of the helmets with the worry of like clipping or something yet you can squish Hrothgar's heads in the Diabolic Helm of Fending...
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...m/91028afbda2/

...but Hrothgar and Viera can't wear simple things like hats. Y'all can weirdly contort the shape of helmets to fit Miq'otes ears but can't make an opening to let Viera's ears roam freely or just let Hrothgar wear the helmets/hats.

I'm sure there are other things I have left out but I have made my major points already.

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What I can kinda understand is old helmets/hats, what I can't is all the ones that came starting with Shadowbringers. Many races get helmets/hat edits: Miqo'te, Elezen, Lalafel. And not just helmets, Roegadyn and Lalafel get custom-designed leg-gear. Planting a hat on some Viera ears or on Hrothgar's head and adjusting them slightly shouldn't be a calculus formula.
The only silver lining is that they're fixing Hrothgar's hair situation and once they do that they can start fixing the helmets and hat situation.

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Originally Posted by Amnmaat

What I can kinda understand is old helmets/hats, what I can't is all the ones that came starting with Shadowbringers. Many races get helmets/hat edits: Miqo'te, Elezen, Lalafel. And not just helmets, Roegadyn and Lalafel get custom-designed leg-gear. Planting a hat on some Viera ears or on Hrothgar's head and adjusting them slightly shouldn't be a calculus formula.
The only silver lining is that they're fixing Hrothgar's hair situation and once they do that they can start fixing the helmets and hat situation.

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Can i see a source? I'm not doubting you. I just need hope for my Kitty boi TwT

I play a female Midlander. I believe this choice gives me one of the races with the most options for customization and hairstyles. Despite that, I've probably used maybe 4-5 different hairstyles for a prolonged amount of time, but typically switch between three choices.

"Well that's you, and everyone is different."

I am quite certain someone is thinking that this very moment. However, the point that I am getting at is that if I were to choose a Hrothgar, I likely wouldn't be as affected because I don't change things about my character all that much anyway. But if I wanted an avatar with more options for customization, and a race that can wear the headgear in the game, Hrothgar would be the last one I would choose. Do you see where I am getting at now?

You know what you are getting with Hrothgar. And if you don't then you are still faulted for not informing yourself adequately before purchasing a fantasia to make the change. I get that you like this race, and want more options for it; after a whole year and tons of other threads, all you are doing is beating a dead horse.

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Originally Posted by Decoy_Wolff

Can i see a source? I'm not doubting you. I just need hope for my Kitty boi TwT

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They said they're adding more hair for Viera/Hrothgar, and you can currently see different face/hair combinations at Gangos (Shb relic island).
I'm not going through the 5 hours twitch streams to find it but it's in one of them, the February one I believe.

@Gemina
Beating the dead horse is how we got Glamour dresser, 2B butt, 2B butt reversal, extra dyes, extra inventory space, among other things.
Beat that dead horse all day.

I'd like to see an upgrade to the character customisation for every race and gender combination in the game. I know that's a bold undertaking, though Viera and Hrothgar are not unique when it comes to having issues. The 'trade-off' for having much more fluid animations and rigging than most of the other playable races is that they can't use many pieces of headgear. That's a problem to be addressed, though given that other playable races have issues that they've been dealing with for much longer I wouldn't be surprised if the development team were looking into updating everything all at once - hence the delay. Further weight can be added to that theory when one of the game's main competitors is set to update character customisation in its upcoming expansion.

I am pretty sure that they stopped with the ear pockets for SHB?
theyve always really bothered me tho... How are we supposed to hear?? this applies to any race that gets weird ear pockets on helms (like elezen and lala)
just. cut holes into helmets. less work all around

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Originally Posted by Decoy_Wolff

...but Hrothgar and Viera can't wear simple things like hats. Y'all can weirdly contort the shape of helmets to fit Miq'otes ears but can't make an opening to let Viera's ears roam freely or just let Hrothgar wear the helmets/hats.

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The miqo ear situation is not really comparible to viera when talking about hats. The smallest viera ears are far larger than a miqo's, and miqos ears are completely standardised into one shape and size while viera's are not.

Different viera ear styles have slightly different placement and can point in different directions which would mean that altering some of the hats and helms for them would require SE to make several versions of the same helm/hat just for one race. That's a lot of work. Sure they could take the lazy route and just use one set of holes for every ear style and have all armoured ears identical, but then players would complain about clipping and/or how their ear style changes with certain gear. They could hide the ears with some hats like they do with miqos but then that would be venturing into unrealistic territory. Most hats do not look like they could fit viera ears inside them. Never mind how it would hide the most defining feature of the race. Even when miqos' ears are hidden you can still see their tail. Viera don't have another physical attribute that makes them very clearly a different race.

The hat situation sucks but I understand that it's not a quick or easy fix. However the hairstyle situation is absurd. Most of the hairstyles would work perfectly fine for viera.

As for hrothgar, a lot of hairstyles would clip badly due to their hunched posture...but this does not explain why hairstyles are locked to faces. I remember when I raised this concern when the benchmark for ShB was released many players told me not to worry because there is no way such a silly restriction would be in the live game. Well my concerns were unfortunately valid because the character creation from the benchmark is identical to the game itself. That most thought it would never happen in the final version of the race just shows how utterly ridiculous that decision was.

However the dilemma for hats and hrothgar makes far less sense than it does for viera. Yes their head is a different shape but aside from their face it's a pretty standard shape. Their ears are tiny so the viera issue simply doesn't exist for them. Sure anything that covers the face would be a problem due to their snouts, but anything that is only on the head for the most part wouldn't be complicated or lengthy to adjust.

In short: I am puzzled as to why hrothgar don't have a far larger choice of hats, why hair is locked to their faces, and why viera do not have access to hairstyles that would clearly work fine with very little adjustment needed.

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Originally Posted by Decoy_Wolff

At least give us a warning on hairstyles that "This hairstyle is unavailable for Hrothgar and Viera" before we waste our money. I see several posts of people who have bought the Shadowbringers Y'shtola hairstyle with the expectation they could put it on their Viera.

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It's bloody stupid that there are no warnings about this while gender and race locked gear is clearly marked as gender or race locked.

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Originally Posted by Penthea

Snip.

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I really liked this post, but I wanted to mention another thing. When they decided viera not getting hats, they went a bit wild with the hair. The styles have a wider range of sizes and widths than hair on other races. This is more obvious when wearing some of the few items viera are allowed to wear. To accommodate the different hairstyles, some of the pins and things are either floating an inch above their head or clipping through the hair because there has to be 1 position for these.

None of these have secondary versions for when a hat is being worn, either. For all older races, some hats are coded to delete part of the hair depending on the style. They would need to go back an additional version for each hairstyle to accommodate the hats. Some will look really weird like the ponytail that has more than a lalafell’s weight of hair that would just completely disappear. Or the one that has Fran’s helmet as part of the hairstyle.

There was a pretty dumb development decision made that neither of the new races would be able to wear hats or helmets and that the player base would be OK with it. I don’t see them walking this back and redoing things to make them work and have played this game for too long to expect them to suddenly change this. It’s just a situation that we as players and they as developers just have to accept was bad and move on. The free work some of the devs did to give hrothgar and viera some of the headgear items was nice, but in the end I think that’s the most that we can expect and it may have caused them to be less likely to give us the full spread in the end since our position on getting all the headgear is weaker now than it would be if they could wear none of it at all.

My very first Final Fantasy game was Tactics Advance, so I have a deep love for Ivalice and want to like viera. They’re tall, muscular, AND pretty and I actually like their subdued emotes that fit their personality in the other games and don’t make me feel like an anime girl whenever I do anything. But as soon as I start feeling limited, either with hair options or hats, I inevitably fantasia back to hyur. It’s too bad that their attempt to add my favorite race to FFXIV was sort of a half effort.

i think they mostly notice the posts on the Japanese forums , like the emotes post there where most of the suggested emotes got implemented in the game at some point .
what's bothering me the most are the hats more than the hairstyles to be honest , because style/glamours are what make the character more unique then the hairstyles , because lets be honest we only have too few faces to choose from and each race have the same bodyshape so only glamours will make your character unique to you . we don't have to have all the hats ingame , just one wearable (dyeable) hat for each class would be nice .

Bumping this. The state of hrothgar and viera is honestly disgusting, especially with how long it has been. There are even mods out that let you wear some hats or change your hairstyle away from your face-how is it that modders have done this when Square insists they can't? Clearly it's not that hard, is square just lazy? It's so annoying.

They probably just don't think this is a very important issue in comparison to the other things they are working on. No, I am not defending them either. It's been nearly a year and a half since these races were released, they chose to release hrothgar in the limited state they are in for their "beast head", knowing their limitations in doing so. The fact that you guys have to use a fantasia to change your hair - which you only have one alternative of per face - is frankly egregious. Not a single update, for EITHER race, and even IF they released in the next patch it would probably be too little too late in the patch cycle. Maybe, as others have suggested before, they are waiting for the next expansion for any actual updates to these races. Releasing it now, wouldn't get much attention, but releasing it then would.

I wonder if and when (supposedly) we eventually do get an update for viera/hrothgar, if it will actually be substantial or not.

Subjects are hatless.
Repeat: hatless.

There is this "Not enough time to adapt old hats" reasoning I've seen before... But that one does not justify at all the fact that hats released POST Hroth and Viera release still don't work for them. What gives? Is not like both races have a sculpture of a horn on top of their heads. Viera's ears start more or less in the same spot of a Miqo'te and the only one that would probably clip inside bigger hats is the lowered ears... And even so, just a couple of models out there.

Hairstyles, no excuse for the Modern Aesthetics not being tailored at least for Viera. I would get that Hroth's head shape might be really complicated to tinker some styles, but Viera? C'mon, they are basically human heads with bunny ears on top.

The reason likely why we won't get Viera & Hrothgar updates (Or a much needed character creator overhaul) is it's not that big of a deal to the SE team, regardless of the many complaints & requests from players. If the JP community isn't complaining about it it likely won't happen- once enough of the JP community gets on it, SE will notice.

I think Mog Station head items & Special code head & hair items (clouds hair, /y'shtola's moddish attire, aymerics hair, matoya's hat) should have been included to be wearable & visibly seen on viera & Hrothgar, no exceptions. It's a legit over sight but with the set backs of Covid, etc. it will likely be an excuse or reason why Viera & Hrothgar won't be updated for a very, very long time.

I'd die for a character creator overhaul & Viera/ Hrothgar updates. I'd also like to add that The lack of unique hairstyles, long hair styles, stubble, beards, more variety of color wheel options, lack of tattoo's, lack of make-up options-- let's face it, the FFXIV character creator is out-dated which tempts people to use mods (Which, if you take a good long look at many of the mods, they're not NSFW- but they're beards, natural looking make-up, Contour to enhance faces, long hairs, NPC hairs & clipping fixing, quality fixes because the existing character creator leaves so much to be desired.)
Among those are Viera hats.

I'd also like to add What's even more disappointing about Viera is they are really just, boring. Sure, they have pretty features on their face but overall, nothing like how they looked in FFXll. I loved the way the Viera looked in FFXll- yes, even the long fingers with the long nails- in FFXIV, Viera just seem so watered down & less feral & bland. I wish the current design only offered 1 ear type, to look just like Frans ears- the way they're raised & close together with Spots, that way we might have seen Hats.

The state is outrageous for both vieras and hrothgars. They are -broken-

We pay for items just like anyone else on the mogstation but cant -use- the items we paid for. We work hard for our gear but can't show them. Glamours are a huge thing in FF14 and I honestly thought they would fix both races within the first few months of the expansion. I PAID rl money for a race change because I was under the impression that the hat and hair situation would be solved soon but it had got on the back burner in the expansion. Soon I had to shelf out with MORE rl money for ANOTHER race change because I want my hats.. It is really unacceptable the state it is in now.

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Originally Posted by Sinzalia

The state is outrageous for both vieras and hrothgars. They are -broken-

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They aren't broken though.
We were told before release that the Viera and Hrothgar would have big limitations to them when it came to headgear and hairstyles and the community (mostly) were happy with said limitations if that was what was required to add the Viera & Hrothgar to the game.

We were however also told that there would be new headpieces and hairstyles added over time after their release.

At least vieras can change their hairstyle. That is a reason I'll change to male viera. It's an upgrade over hrothgar because I'll be able to change my hairsyile, have more hair colors and highlights. I never cared about hats, even when I was a miqo'te or highlander. I usually only use horns or glasses anyway, so this doesn't bother me even though I know It's important for other people.

To be honest, a fixed position/model for the ears while wearing helmets/hats sounds the most reasonable way to go, both customization wise and lore wise. Aside from the modelling effort.

As a starter in 3D-Modelling I know how time consuming re-modelling and re-texturing 1 headgear can be. Surely don't want to imagine the time it takes to re-model like 200+ headgear for different classes for 3-4 different types of ears.

Also, our Viera ears are not made out of bone or some static material. They are still flesh. And flesh can bend.

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Originally Posted by Decoy_Wolff

Thinking too far into the future lol

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And you weren't wrong, just saying lol

We need new hairstyles!

definitely would like more hairstyles, or at the very least, let us choose between the current hair without having to change our face. Two hairstyles per face is just depressing :(

We need more hats too, for sure!

I just want hrothgar to be able to wear red mage hats

Since hrothgar can wear reaper hat I can’t see why they can’t wear red mage hats

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Originally Posted by Otter_McTobbs

Since hrothgar can wear reaper hat I can’t see why they can’t wear red mage hats

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The difference seems to be between hats that cover the entire head and ones that leave the lower half of the hair visible.

I think the reaper hat has a cowl under it so it covers up the hair, so it can work for everyone.

Least we finally have some info, a year and half later.

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Originally Posted by Evergrey

They aren't broken though.
We were told before release that the Viera and Hrothgar would have big limitations to them when it came to headgear and hairstyles and the community (mostly) were happy with said limitations if that was what was required to add the Viera & Hrothgar to the game.

We were however also told that there would be new headpieces and hairstyles added over time after their release.

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Them telling us they'll be broken doesn't make them any less broken.

They don't *need* to have these limitations, either. Modders have proved that.

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Originally Posted by FoxyAreku

Least we finally have some info, a year and half later.



Them telling us they'll be broken doesn't make them any less broken.

They don't *need* to have these limitations, either. Modders have proved that.

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Ever since I started playing on PC I find SE's stance more and more ridiculous.

And the whole stubble situation is a whole nother world of unfathomable.

Instead of putting band-aids on band-aids maybe fix the damn thing? Or is being the #1/2 whatever MMO on the market still not enough incentive?

As much as I love the incredible stuff like the atmosphere or story some aspects of this game are incredibly half-assed.

I'm sorry if I spoke out of turn but it's probably obvious that I find the whole situation frustrating.

4 years later, and still radio silence
What good is having exclusive items, if I need to fantasia to another race to play it?
Not to mention, a mother of 2 can fix this problem within 2 months of Dawntrail releasing, in her spare time, coding/modeling by herself in her basement.
There's genuinely no excuse for the sorry state of Viera and Hrothgar.
NOT TO MENTION ONLY 5 HAIRS ON FEMALE HROTHGAR ON RELEASE